Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Why practice doesn't necessarily always make perfect.

I recently discovered New York Public Radio's Radio Lab. Last week, while trying to catch up on all the episodes I'd missed, I heard (what was to me) an absolutely amazing fact.

But first (and the reason you need to know this will become apparent), I want to tell you that I earned a solid A in both Biology and Bio Lab. I was able to do so by virtue of the world's most primo set of flash cards--a full 8 1/2 inch stack of the most comprehensive cards ever compiled for Kirkpatrick's Biology course. I spent at least as much time during the semester creating these cards as I did studying them. This stack of cards was so perfect, in fact, that I was able to dine out on the price they fetched for the entirety of the following semester. For all I know, they are still in circulation. As I said, they were guaranteed grade-A flash cards.

The problem with flash cards, though, is that the information comes in, takes a look around, sees that there's nobody else there worth being seen with, and then vamooses. No sign that it's ever even been there--no forgotten pair of sunglasses, no wet ring on the coffee table, no lipstick-stained cigarette butt in the ashtray. Pooft. So, virtually every bit of information I memorized for that class is long gone. You'd never even know I had taken a biology course, much less aced it. Which explains how I was able to be amazed by a factI had apparently already learned.

Did you know that every man passes on to his male child an exact copy of his Y chromosome? That child then passes on the exact copy to his male child, and so on. So that, over the course of a thousand years, that same Y chromosome gets passed down through the generations, and unless a mutation occurs, all the male descendants possess an exact copy of Big Daddy's original Y chromosome?

This totally and completely blows my mind. I can't even get my hair to do the same thing two days in a row. And as for my progeny--most of the time she's trying to figure out which shopping mall I stole her from.

So way to go, men. Way to pass down your essence through the centuries. Now if I could just have a program please, so I can tell which of you are part of the same bloodline.

I think I may have finally figured out why I keep marrying the same men, over and over again.